Around the world and off the wall

A week's worth of eclectic offerings

Argentine director Lucrecia Martel (below) will be at Harvard Film Archive for screenings of two films. Above: ''The Holy Girl.'' (Fine Line Features (above); CHRISTOPHE KARABA)

Some weeks the Boston film scene serves up loads of what can best be described as "quirk" - international works that tilt to the avant-garde, festival concepts that are clever and weird, and programs of short films that are long on creativity if short on narrative structure.

This is one of those weeks. The experimental international works come from Berlin, and Ute Aurand, Milena Gierke, and Renate Sami will be accompanying them at an evening at the Harvard Film Archive tomorrow at 7 p.m.

The art of the three German filmmakers is impressionistic. Sami's "Film Diary, 1975-85," for instance, is described as a piece that "interweaves different places and seasons into an atmospheric meditation on friendship and memory." A compilation of Super 8 movies by Gierke focuses on small details and objects in Berlin life, and the three works by Aurand, each six minutes or shorter, are silent pieces she filmed in Switzerland. Details about the program are available at 617-495-4700 and www.hcl.harvard.edu/hfa.

The Found Footage Festival is based on a quirky concept that could either work or flop: showcase nutty videos found at garage sales and in thrift stores. The curators for the touring event, Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, have written for The Onion and the "Late Show With David Letterman," and this year they've cobbled together bits from workplace sexual harassment videos, an Angela Lansbury exercise video, and an instructional video on how to toilet train cats.

The collection screens at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. A trailer is online at www.foundfootagefest.com, and Coolidge info is at 617-734-2500 and www.coolidge.org.

As for short films, on Saturday the Institute of Contemporary Art is presenting a program called the International Experimental Cinema Exposition, which includes works from around the world and right here in Boston. Local filmmakers include Luther Price, Robert Todd, Jonathan Schwartz, and Rebecca Meyers. Todd has described his 11-minute piece, "Antechamber," as being about "the places we find our spiritual presence augmented, inflamed, or simply acknowledged."

The event starts at 6 p.m. and will include a Q&A with the artists. Additional information is at www.experimentalcinema.org, or contact the ICA at 617-478-3103 and www.icaboston.org.

CONVERSATION WITH: The Harvard Film Archive is presenting three films by Argentine director Lucrecia Martel on Saturday, next Sunday, and next Monday, with Martel in attendance for Sunday's 7 p.m. show of "La niña santa (The Holy Girl)" and Monday's 7 p.m. show of "The Headless Woman (La mujer sin cabeza)."

The HFA sings high praise for Martel, writing, "In her three films about young women, each increasingly older, each increasingly - even obsessively - in tune with their immediate environment, Martel has proposed an alternate, abstract mode of melodrama that traces the fragile and fugitive patterns of directionless love, accidents and unexplained violence. Seen together, Martel's Salta trilogy stands as a high point of contemporary Latin American cinema."

WOMEN IN FILM AND VIDEO PARTY: The annual Fall Kick Off Party for Women in Film & Video/New England takes place Monday from 5 to 9 p.m. at The Enormous Room, 567 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge. Current and prospective members are invited to attend; call 617-987-0259 or visit www.womeninfilmvideo.org for more information.

WIFV/NE has entered into a new partnership with the New England Institute of Art. They plan to co-produce a women's film series featuring master classes, screenings, and an awards event with prominent international female directors, producers, and screenwriters.

LOCAL EMMY WINNERS: Congratulations to Gary Henoch and Katha Seidman, who won the Emmy last month for their lighting direction and scenic design on the PBS "Nova" documentary "Forgotten Genius."

The work is about African-American chemist Percy Julian (1899-1975), who faced tremendous racial obstacles during his career developing drugs from plants. Henoch was director of photography and Seidman was art director on the film. Highlights screened at the Coolidge Corner last year before the national television broadcast. Details about the movie and Julian's life are online at www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/julian.

SCREENINGS OF NOTE: There aren't enough movies about African-American ventriloquist dummies in space . . . in fact, there may not be any movies about African-American ventriloquist dummies in space - until now. Local filmmaker Ted Cormey is presenting a sneak peek of his short film "Aerodynamics" at the nightclub Rumor, 100 Warrenton St., on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. Cormey reports that he's been working on the movie for six years with Ricardo Pitts-Wiley as ventriloquist Willie Jefferson, other actors from Improv Boston and Actors Shakespeare Project, and animatronic ventriloquist dummies designed by the Gemini Co. of Brooklyn. A trailer is online at www.aerodynamicsmovie.com.

Globe film critic Ty Burr will be at the Brattle Theatre on Saturday for a free 11 a.m. screening of the 1959 Yasujiro Ozu movie "Good Morning," about two Japanese brothers who give their parents the silent treatment because their parents won't buy them a TV. The morning event is part of the Elements of Cinema series to bring classic film to the world - or at least the Boston-area part of the world. A trailer is online at the Brattle website, www.brattlefilm.org (617-876-6837).

And the Brattle brings all three "Lord of the Rings" movies to the big screen Friday, Saturday, and next Sunday, with individual screenings throughout the weekend and a marathon session of all three movies next Sunday starting at 11:30 a.m.

Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com.